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The thing that makes people ask this does
not stand out like a sore thumb, it’s more like it stands out like a sore
ear.

(I have often been asked ‘What planet are
you from?’ but the reasons for that is entirely different.)

I don’t sound like I come from here, and
people, used only to the limited accents they hear on TV, have difficulty
placing me.Lacking the nasal inflection
of more long-term residence of this continent marks me out as different.Now, it’s as plain as the nose on my face
that I have no real deficiency when it comes to the organ needed for ‘nasal
inflection’, but I still can’t get it right.

But as time pass I find it harder and
harder to answer that simple, repetitive question.By the end of this year I will have lived
longer in Australia than in the county that gave me my accent – Somerset.Does 19 years of dwelling, over 35 years ago,
still define where I am from?Is the
‘from’ nothing more than a factual accounting of birthplace and the majority of
childhood?Will I remain some form of
outsider until my accent fades and I sound like the people around me?And what would happen if in moments of
inattention, or cider induced verbal clumsiness, my Somerset accent pops back
to the surface?Would this verbal
chimera be a better description of where I am from than the older, single
source vintage?Who knows?

Questions asked in the hypothetical bring
answers in the abstract, and the reality lies untested.Bias. Wishful thinking.Image making.

‘Home
is where the heart lies, but if the heart lies, where is home?’(Fish)

I point the car south, away from the Lakes
and towards Somerset.Minutes turn into
hours, the miles click over, the children chatter; anonymous coffee; jelly
snakes, brought for a walk on the hills but overlooked on the day.We pass through the Midlands, which, to me,
are a grey space of unknown places.Only
the service stations have any degree of familiarity, with an architecture that
has not worn well over the years and a cheesy spread of franchise food.These grey ribbons of concrete make a mockery
of the idea that it is better to travel than to arrive.After a gallon of Costa’s coffee the arrival
cannot come soon enough.

We pass a sign for Gloucester and I know
that the back of the journey has been broken.In the past this city marked the northern edge of all I knew, and beyond
must have been the Midlands – which is laughably incorrect.Apart from a few day trips in the height of
summer and an annual Scout camp, my world revolved around the edges of northern
Somerset.A small place, essentially invisible
to the rest of the world except for straw chewing caricature and songs about
cider and tractors.In an indication
that at least part of me must be rooted in this place, my toes still curl in
pain at the sight and sound of such things on TV; even when the village is
elsewhere, the local idiot (a phenomenon that largely disappeared with the
coming of the railways) seems to be cast from the south west.

Even for a person that had such a stay at
home upbringing as I did – mortgage stress and low wages effectively prevented
much in the way of holidays and travel – I was surprised at how many of the
place names on the journey south rang bells.Exits from the motorways would point to places I had never been, but for
which I had constructed some form of mental picture.As I approached Somerset that started to
change.The place names were still as
familiar, but what made them different was the memory of place that went with
them.Places where I scared myself
witless in a kayak, places where I fished for chub with limited success, but at
least no scarring.And eventually I come
to places that were everyday.Places
where I bought books and underpants (and was embarrassed to find I had selected
them in a range of sizes as well as colours).Places where people knew what I drank and knew what our weekend bread
order was.Places where people ignored
me because my clothes were unkempt, my shoes were unpolished and our car was
rusty and old.Places where people swore
before pronouncing my surname.The place
where I grew up.

If this place really was home, then it was
a small place indeed.We were staying in
an old converted farm house on the outskirts of Shepton Mallet, a town less
than half an hour from where I was born, and I recognised very little of
it.The railway bridge on the way into
town was familiar, as was the general location of a second hand shop much visited
by my parents. I knew that there was a fish and chip shop that was much visited
by my brother, and that Babycham, a sparkling perry and the first alcoholic
drink to be advertised in British TV, had been invented and brewed there, but
that was about the sum of it.

The farmhouse was down a side lane of
surprising narrowness and abundant vegetation.Such road signs as were present were old and ambiguous; this was the
kind of place my Mum would have called ‘the back lanes of…….’ the exact
location of which would have only been known to her and her imagination. A tractor equipped with a hedge trimmer was
flaying the living flesh from the tops of the leafy borders, producing that
musty smell that only elder makes.I’m
sure that in the background, above the mechanical din and the screams of broken
buds, I could hear the ghosts of hedge layers past weeping.Maybe.

After a brief failing of confidence we
arrived at the farmhouse.It was built,
as they are in this part of the world, from stones the colour of pale
butter.The mortar between the rough-cut
stones was wonderfully imprecise, a patchwork of different blends and varieties
that must catalogue a dozen renovations and restorations. Sticking out from the walls were hooks and
wooden beams whose purposes had long since been forgotten.The buildings formed a square around an
ornate garden, with three sides formed by converted barns and a forth being the
original farmhouse.The roofs were
spotted with lichen circles and bundles of moss, the products of clean air and
abundant rain. Standing outside the
square of buildings you could see that the land fell away in all but one
direction. The only exception was the route taken by the road, which rose away
behind the homestead.In all directions
the overwhelming experience was green.Grass, woodlands, bushes, fields.For eyes used to the muted summer colours of Australia, such intensity
was almost painful. Cones long rested from underuse were firing with machinegun
regularity; for a colour associated with cool and shade it was remarkably
bright.Even after the passage of 30
years it felt familiar.

But not everything was the same.Somewhere down in the valley below the
buildings a buzzard was mewing like a cat.Long drawn out calls that carried clearly through an atmosphere
thickened by the smell of the cut hedge and alive with the buzz of insects.The story of the buzzard is one of rare
recovery.Hunted as vermin, killed by
pesticides and then inadvertently starved when myxomatosis wiped out the
rabbits on which it fed, the buzzard had reached its nadir when I was a
kid.It was a rarity, a bird that was
hanging on (just) in the western reaches of England where much of what passes
for the wild could be found. Seeing one
was unusual, and a likely highlight of the day.As I grew up, they grew back and are now the most common bird of prey in
the UK – and of course I am now a rarity there myself.Some people now claim that the buzzard has
reached plague levels, which probably shows how far we are from having any understanding
of natural abundance.The bird kept
calling and I kept listening, but it never became more than a speck on the
horizon, a mote of wildness drifting over the fields and badly treated
hedgerows.

Below the house were hazel bushes, heavy
with nuts.My mother may have insisted
that they were filberts – I never knew the difference and I have left it 35
years too late to ask.

A woodpecker – green – yaffles in the
distance.Later in the week, it, or its
progeny, terrorise the ants in the lawn near the house.With heavy beak stabs it pulls back chunks of
grass to find its food. One step at a
time I move closer, aware of how loud the clack of my camera shutter is.Eventually I push my luck too far and the
bird takes flight, pauses on a wire fence and disappears over a hedge.

The whole scene that unfolds before me is
strikingly familiar, but also noticeably strange.It feels like walking into a well-known room,
maybe your bedroom, and finding the wallpaper is still the same, but all the
windows are in different positions.You
can see things that you know and think you understand, but sticking their heads
out from deep cover are things that are different and unexpected.You know that it’s not memory that is
failing, but reality that has changed.But that’s hard to accept.Memory
fixes things in place, crystallises experience into certainty, and allows for
no change.The world turns, but memory
becomes the fixed point.It’s
reassuring and simultaneously disconcerting.

At such times you need an anchor to hold
you in place while your head spins.

You need family.You need friends.And luckily I had both.We mix wine with memories and add a dash of
news.We share food at a long table. In
hindsight it seems like a communion to real friends rather than imaginary ones,
a reconnection of things shared and understood.In hindsight it seems that old friends are the best reason to come home.

For a very long time I used to take the
same walk every evening.A
constitutional that took me from my front door, through Stratton-on-the-Fosse,
which was only ever called Stratton, and back over fields full of inquisitive
cows to my front door.I suppose the
whole walk took about an hour.Days of
my life probably disappeared in that journey.I normally walked on my own.Now
I was walking the path in reverse; starting in Stratton and heading for my old
front door.And I was not alone.Two children and my best friend/wife came
along too.

The village school now sat on the edge of
my old pathway, and even that has changed from the last time I had seen it. I
had returned a few years earlier, just in time to see my father (which sounds
far too formal) before he died.Just
before I became an adult orphan, which comes to most of us, but is none the
less a strange place to find yourself.The top stone stile at the entrance to the Drang, a old pathway between
two roads, and the stone steps below were just as polished as I remembered them
– and I could not help but think of what my contribution had been to this sheen
in a hard surface.The path itself was a
little overgrown, with moss and other plants forcing their way through the
surface.There was a handrail along the
wall on the steepest section of the path that had never been there before.Maybe the people who still use, or know
about, the path have become old and few and far between.Maybe it’s a through way that has more of a
past than a present or a future.Maybe
it’s path that has more importance in memory than recent use.

Maybe it’s just a path.

There is an extra window, high above the
front door.The bay windows to the left
hand of the door have been replaced.The
patchwork of stones and mortar in the walls is still clear, as is the
difference between the stonework between my house and the one to the left.Only it’s not my house anymore.If ever there was a time and place where
circles collide and pathways intersect it’s here and now; standing outside the
house in which I was born, telling my own children about what was behind each
of the windows.My brother’s
bedroom.The breakfast-room; where
everything happened.The lounge; where
nothing happened and the best furniture in the house stood unused.My parent’s bedroom; the room into which my
mother would retreat for days on end, blinded by migraine or medical
electricity.A house full of memories,
some which I struggle to recall, and some I wish I could forget.

To my surprise the front door of the house
is opened by the current owner, understandably concerned about the appearance
of a family seeming to claim ownership of his property.To my ever-greater surprise he invites us
inside.This is strange and
unexpected.While the bones of the house
remain the same, much has changed.The
stairs, which used to twist through half a circle, have changed places, walls
that were made of wood have been replaced by stone and brick and most of the rooms
have changed name and role.Remarkably,
in the back yard the two deep, square form porcelain sinks that we moved from
inside the house to outside are still being used to grow flowers.From the backyard I looked up to see my old
bedroom window, but it was not there, buried by renovation and extension.Maybe that was for the best.These are old oceans in which to swim.Hot and cold.Spring and summer.My birth unremembered, my mother’s death, two
days after a first kiss.The
embarrassment of unkempt corners, peeling wallpaper and pervasive damp.Before I leave I pass on the story of the
‘letter box’ by the door – a window the size and shape of a letterbox that
opened to a small alcove where the mail was sorted.This is the story I was told.Who knows - it may even be true.

But despite the genuine welcome of the new
owners, the experience becomes increasingly strange.The place is too familiar and too
different.It’s a little like the
feeling on waking and being unsure if what you recall is a memory or a dream;
the evidence of your eyes conflicts with the sense of your own
understanding.

I was glad to step outside, where the road
curved in the way it always had and the old rail bridge was still in place with
its heavy shape and grey stonewalls.It
is strange to think of what has changed and what has remained the same.

Away from the village we head towards Wells
and Glastonbury.Old towns that, at
their heart at least, seem to have changed less than I expected.We drive over the Mendips, which was where I
spent much of my time as a kid.Priddy
Ponds with their easy perch and more elusive rudd.The paths are less worn than I recall and the
weed beds extend closer to the banks.There must be less traffic and more growth.Kids stay at home, corralled by society that
disapproves of their inactivity, but is too fearful to let them roam free.The changes wrought by nature seem less
shocking than those brought about by changes in fashion or the capricious
nature of fashion.

Priddy, with its splashing fish and bright
bodied dragonflies, seems more like home than the house that has changed for
the better.A small hawk, maybe a
Merlin, flashes over the pool and on the horizon Long Barrows connect the
ground to the sky.Here I do not feel
like a guest.Here I feel at home.

Later in the week I pull bags from the back
of a taxi and unlock my front door. Here I do not feel like a guest.Here I feel at home.

As obvious as it may seem, home is a word
richer with meanings and ambiguity than its four letters would suggest.But what ever it means, I’m glad to be there.